In April, Brandeis University, under pressure from misguided people decrying Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe,” as well as from the Council on American Islamic relation (CAIR; an organization that, under the guise of improving those relations, issues veiled threats about offending Muslims), rescinded an invitation for Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree. Hirsi Ali made a dignified response (here) and refused Brandeis’s invitation to come back some other time to engage in “discussion.”

It was a cowardly move for Brandeis, motivated solely by fear and political correctness. Hirsi Ali is in fact a hero: a woman who has basically given up the possibility of a normal life in the cause of improving the treatment of women under Islam. After the murder of her collaborator Theo van Gogh, and threats on her own life, as well as a political kerfuffle (the Dutch government first rescinded her citizenship because…